Nintendo lays off 320 staffers in Europe
In June, there was talk of Nintendo of Europe laying off 130 full-time employees. An additional 190 staffers have since been confirmed to be receiving the same treatment. These people come from Nintendo’s Germany-based localization department by way of a leasing agency. Kotaku points out, “Though technically those 190 people were temporary employees, in practice, they all worked exclusively for Nintendo, and many of them had been working there for years”.
All of these layoffs combine to affect 320 employees. They will all be gone by August 31.
Nintendo said in a statement today:
As previously communicated in June 2014, approximately 130 permanent employees will be released by Nintendo of Europe (Germany) at the end of August 2014 as part of a set of measures to better enable the European business to adapt to the rapidly changing business environment.
As a separate measure, Nintendo of Europe is reorganizing its European Localization Development (ELD) department, where it currently uses a number of temporary agency workers in translation and testing activities, in order to increase flexibility and cost-efficiency in the long-term. It is intended that there will be an increase in outsourcing future translation and test activities to third-party companies on an as-needed basis, and very sadly this has meant having ended the contracts of 190 temporary agency workers, who were formally notified of this decision in June 2014.
